[Mark Maness]

I would imagine this will be a point upgrade after Snow Leopard is released, of a 7.5 release around Christmas (for a fee, of course).

Did anyone notice the drop in the full version price?

The previous FCS2 had a full price of $1299. That’s a $300 price cut. NICE!

I love that Apple fixed alot of what we were gripping about BUT no all of the features were fixed. Personally, I like the fact that speed changes no longer need to ripple the timeline. The new Export changes… AWESOME! A timecode window… About time! Background Export – WAY COOL!!! Improved render management – Let’s see when we get our hands on it – BUT it sounds great. Display SD safe title area inside HD – YEAH!

TWO THUMBS UP!!!

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

[walter biscardi] “I had no idea the Firewire conversion didn’t go full raster on the conversion. Kind of destroys the whole point of ProRes being full raster, 10bit codec.”

Yes, it does… BUT in one way HDV is full compatible with XDCAM HD 35mb VBR. This is a good thing. Now, if Apple could just speed up the render times, everything would be OK with me.

The only time this affects anyone would be mixing XDHD 35mb with HDV. Obviously, we are an extremely small segment that Apple didn’t see a need to optimize ProRes422 in this situation.

Typically, Walter, we do ingest thru the Kona cards into ProRes or DVCProHD, but when there is a shortage of time or large amount of footage, there is a need to capture thru firewire for speed, or so we thought.

[walter biscardi] “We have two Sony M15U HDV decks that run through AJA Converters to turn the analog Component / Stereo Audio to an HD-SDI stream for ingest into our Kona 3’s and it’s perfect.”

This is exactly our setup, too. Any new systems that we build will more than likely include the LHi card for this reason.

[walter biscardi] “What you’ll get is super clean, super easy to work with ProRes HD files that are full raster. And as I said earlier, it’s a perfect workflow for broadcast, episodic television. We do this weekly here in our shop”

We, too, are looking into this workflow for our full time workflow.

Thanks, Walter.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

Thanks, Gary and David…

Yes, it is pretty messed up when you have to convert HD to ProRes422 via firewire. Thus, the long render times.

I’m assuming here that FCP doesn’t realize the difference in the frame sizes and assumes that 1440×1080 is a flavor of HDV so when it renders, it also conforms the video. This is just a theory of mine, though.

Kinda puts a hole into HDV-ProRes422 conversion to save time and quality. Now, you still have the improved quality in your renders but the time wasted is probably the same as working entirely in HDV and conforming for output. At least, it is for me.

Thanks to all who have chimed in on this. Maybe, just maybe someone from Apple has seen this and maybe by some strange fluke (just a dream) is working on a fix to help this out.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

Have you set your Easy Setup back to it setting before the digibeta mastering?

Have you checked to see if a menu setting in the deck has been changed?

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

[Chris Poisson] “As Walter says, HDV captured as ProRes is full raster, even when captured via FW. I use this daily on my MBP and I don’t experience long render times at all. “

I understand and wish we could BUT how do you capture HDV, convert to ProRes and have it be full raster since HDV is 1440×1080. The conversion on the fly is always 1440×1080, not the full raster 1920×1080.

Besides, it won’t match the specs of XDCAM HD if its full raster 1920×1080, unless we capture all of it using the Kona card and ProRes.

You see my dilemma.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

Well….

That does clear it up. Your hard drive is too slow for this. It would be fine with XDCAM HD 4:2:0 flavoring but not for the new 4:2:2 flavor…. XDCAM HD 422 runs at 50 mb and 100 mb. And the F700 footage was captured how?

I’d say that your drives using fw800 will not work for this sort of project. Go with eSATA.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

Ok, Jason…

Let me ask you this. How are you ingesting your media? Is the XDCAM HD from the EXS series of cameras? And what Easy Setup are you using?

I didn’t know it was possible to bring in XDCAM HD without the Sony Software UNLESS you are capturing to another codec. Can you shed some light on this?

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

How about some more specs on your Mac?

Is it a Mac Pro or a G5? How much RAM? What version of the Sony Software Transfer program do you have? Do you have the latest drivers from Blackmagic?

[Jason Porthouse] “Any suggestions/fixes/workarounds aside from disabling thumbnails (I have in the sequence settings, I really need to use them in the bins though…) “

Why do you have to use the thumbnails? Are you logging your media with proper descriptions?

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

I’m sorry… I should have specified that we are converting thru firewire. It works much like DV capture and making clips on Start-Stop Detection. It makes for faster ingestion of tapes on a Mac Pro.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com

[Mark Maness]

No… I wish we were on the newest Mac Pro systems.

Let me add to this…. Last night while pondering before bedtime, I started to think about the fact that the ProRes422 footage that we are using was HDV converted to ProRes and mixed with a little XDCAM HD. This works wonderfully but the render times are awful and I think I may know why.

XDCAM HD is 1440×1080. HDV is 1440×1080. HDV converted to ProRes422 is still 1440×1080. So I magine the render files are being rendered into the same which is not anyway close to the native size of ProRes422.

SO…. with that being said. Here’s my thoughts on HDV to ProRes422 capture. Its awesome until you edit, UNLESS you have lots to time for rendering. But I think what we will do from now on will be to capture using this method. Look through the footage delete the non-useable stuff and recapture into DVCProHD so that we can edit much faster.

The time saving feature of this HDV to ProRes422 is not very practical when used in the real world of episodic program editing.

Sometimes we get carried away with all of the new cool features and forget that sometimes the “powers that be” haven’t really measured its “real world” practicallity.

_______________________________

Wayne Carey
Schazam Productions
https://web.mac.com/schazamproductions
schazamproductions@mac.com